Taking full advantage of the somewhat clear weather, your mother and I did some window shopping at Valley View Farms in preparation for the garden we’re planting this year. Given all the gnashing we’re hearing this spring about rising food prices, we’re refining last year’s approach and planting cash crops to save some money. After doing the week’s shopping, we returned home and made ourselves 4 lbs. of steamed mussels over tomato-garlic sauce with a side of homemade peasant bread. You really like shellfish, little tomato, because when your mother smelled the broth cooking, you started jumping around in anticipation.

The weather was just too good on Sunday to stay inside elbow-deep in insulation, so we spent the entire day outside, catching up on yardwork, gardening, and cleanup. After an obligatory lawn mowing, I chopped the front hedges back to a respectable height, trimmed the two monstrous bushes by the front door, dismantled an ancient rotting picnic table and got it ready for disposal, moved a pile of wood back to the cradle on the far side of the yard, trimmed several large dead branches from our cherry trees, and wrapped several more branches in netting so the birds don’t eat all the fruit.

It was at this point that hubris got the better part of your father, and I pulled up about thirty feet of old busted-up concrete sidewalk on the west side of the house. I’m hoping that by the time you’re ready to walk around outside I’ll have pulled up the rest of it and replaced it with grass, but I think I’m getting ahead of myself.

Thankfully, your mother was smart enough to start some brisket in a slow cooker early in the day, so we threw together some cornbread stuffing left over from Thanksgiving and inhaled almost the entire thing for dinner. You seemed to enjoy that too, because I spent five happy minutes with my hand on your mother’s belly feeling you kicking in there.